


Down by the Levee

by kisahawklin



Series: Supernatural Season 14 Tagathon [8]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Drinking, Episode: s14e17 Game Night, Gen, Thinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 18:37:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18371798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kisahawklin/pseuds/kisahawklin
Summary: Just a little Dean thinking about the events of the most recent episode.





	Down by the Levee

**Author's Note:**

> Don't know, I guess I just wanted to ruminate on this stuff through Dean's eyes... or something. Because I am a little afraid of the clip from the trailer about him disowning Cas.

After he drops them off, after Sammy's tucked in and Jack is hanging out in his room and pretending to sleep and Cas is off wandering the bunker or whatever the hell he does at night, Dean goes out to the quarry with a six-pack and a bottle of Jack. 

He doesn't drink all that much anymore; he doesn't have the same reasons to. His life isn't empty and meaningless and hung on one person who might get up and leave at any moment. No, he has a family, and they're all broken but they're all _there_ and he's learned that even if they leave, they all come back. 

Climbing on Baby's hood, promising to pound out any dents later, Dean leans back against the windshield with his first beer. This is Sammy's favorite position, not his. He tends to sit up, because it tells him he's had too much when he can't do it anymore.

He doesn't care tonight, though. Sam almost died. He was leaving, Dean felt it. Well, Sam felt it, and Sam is much more aware of those things than Dean ever was. He doesn't like the deathbed confessions or reassurances, but Sam wants him to know, and that's still only the ever time they say the important stuff out loud.

Jack saved him, though, and man it is whiplash going from literal dying to perfectly fine. Sam's sleeping it off, which is how he always deals with it. Dean can't sleep when it happens. Not to him and not to anybody else. Certainly not Sam, whose presence in his life is constant, even if their relationship has changed over the years. 

He can't imagine a life without Sam anymore. He used to try, when Sam was all gung-ho to go back to college or whatever. Hunting on the road, alone. He might have been able to do it back then, but now there's a bunker. There's Jack and Cas and Mom and Bobby. Sort of Bobby. There are roots. He never understood the phrase putting down roots before but he thinks maybe he gets it now. 

It's a way to store all the crap. All the emotional bullshit he used to have to bottle up because there was nowhere to put it. Now he can leave it at home, and it, and his family, will be there when he gets back.

Mom said she was worried about Jack, something about killing Nick. It worries him too, a little, because despite Sam having a gun on Nick, he didn't kill him. He thinks maybe Sam still can't take a human life. Even a serial killer life. Even Lucifer's vessel's life. How Sam has kept that strange rule that feels like a lifetime ago. How he hasn't become cynical in that particular way, Dean doesn't know. It's not like he kills humans willy nilly, but Nick's worse than a monster, and Dean would've been able to double tap him without thinking and not have trouble sleeping at night.

Maybe it was just too personal for Sam. In some ways, he and Nick are the same. In all the important ways, they're not – Sam, not just possessed by Lucifer, but tortured by him for so long in the cage, he is an even _better_ person because of it. How he isn't bitter and angry and closed-off, Dean will never understand. The more Dean goes through, the less he wants anything to do with people, the longer it takes them to earn his trust. Not Sam. Sam wants to give everyone a second and third and ninety-sixth chance. They might get better. They might make the right choice.

It's one of the things Dean loves about his brother. And one of the things that drives him the most crazy. 

Dean looks over at the six-pack, all but one longneck still sitting in their cardboard homes. He didn't even bring the bottle of Jack out of the car. He's becoming a lightweight. This is way too much thinking to do sober.

The one thing that's niggling at him is how Jack found them. It makes sense he could find Nick; if his blood was on him, he could sense that part of himself. But Sam and Dean? Their ribs still have that angel carving on them, don't they? Does that not work for Jack? Or are they old and broken and remade so many times that it's been forgotten? Or is Jack really that powerful, or different from an angel?

The questions get him to beer number two, but they're not really something he's concerned about. After all, there aren't enough angels that they need protection of that sort anymore. And Jack? Well.

Honestly, the kid sent Lucifer packing, killed the monster that tried to bring him back, and saved Sam. All of those things are of the good. Dean's not worried yet. Cas doesn't have a soul and he learned the value of life and humanity and all that crap. It only took him a few years. Jack will get it eventually. As long as he still counts the Winchesters as his family, they'll figure it out.


End file.
